293 research outputs found
Cosmological Recombination of Lithium and its Effect on the Microwave Background Anisotropies
The cosmological recombination history of lithium, produced during Big--Bang
nucleosynthesis, is presented using updated chemistry and cosmological
parameters consistent with recent cosmic microwave background (CMB)
measurements. For the popular set of cosmological parameters, about a fifth of
the lithium ions recombine into neutral atoms by a redshift . The
neutral lithium atoms scatter resonantly the CMB at 6708 \AA and distort its
intensity and polarization anisotropies at observed wavelengths around m, as originally suggested by Loeb (2001). The modified anistropies
resulting from the lithium recombination history are calculated for a variety
of cosmological models and found to result primarily in a suppression of the
power spectrum amplitude. Significant modification of the power spectrum occurs
for models which assume a large primordial abundance of lithium. While
detection of the lithium signal might prove difficult, if offers the
possibility of inferring the lithium primordial abundance and is the only probe
proposed to date of the large-scale structure of the Universe for .Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure
Rovibrationally resolved photodissociation of HeH+
Accurate photodissociation cross sections have been obtained for the A-X
electronic transition of HeH+ using ab initio potential curves and dipole
transition moments. Partial cross sections have been evaluated for all
rotational transitions from the vibrational levels v"=0-11 and over the entire
accessible wavelength range 100-1129 Angstrom. Assuming a Boltzmann
distribution of the rovibrational levels of the X state, photodissociation
cross sections are presented for temperatures between 500 and 12,000 K. A
similar set of calculations was performed for the pure rovibrational
photodissociation in the X-X electronic ground state, but covering photon
wavelengths into the far infrared. Applications of the cross sections to the
destruction of HeH+in the early Universe and in UV-irradiated environments such
as primordial halos and protoplanetary disks are briefly discussed
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